Pope: I'll wait to weigh in on cardinal's case

Pope Francis speaks to journalists on board the flight from Krakow, Poland, to Rome, at the end of his 5-day trip to southern Poland, Sunday, July 31, 2016. (Filippo Monteforte/Pool Photo via AP)(Photo: Filippo Monteforte, AP)

Pope Francis said on Sunday that he will wait until Australian justice takes its course before taking a position on child molestation allegations against a top Vatican cardinal, one of his most-trusted aides.

Speaking to reporters aboard the plane returning to Rome from Poland on Sunday, the pope said Cardinal George Pell, now the Vatican's powerful economy minister, should not undergo a trial by the media or by rumor.

"It's in the hands of the justice system and one cannot judge before the justice system," the pope said.

He said Pell had a right to the benefit of the doubt like all those accused, Reuters reported.

Victoria state Police Commissioner Graham Ashton said Thursday that Victoria police had been investigating allegations against Pell for more than a year.

Pell has long been dogged by allegations of mishandling cases of abusive clergy when he was archbishop of Melbourne and later Sydney, The Associated Press reported. More recently, he has been accused of child abuse himself when he was a young priest. Two men, now in their 40s, said he touched them inappropriately under the guise of play at a swimming pool during the late 1970s, according to Australian media.

Separately, AP reported, a businessman this week told Australia's public broadcaster, ABC television, that he saw the cardinal exposing himself to three young boys in a surf club changing room in the late 1980s. Pell was at the time a senior priest in Melbourne.

Earlier this year, Pell testified at an Australian government inquiry on institutional child abuse, where he said the Church made "catastrophic" choices by refusing to believe abused children, shuffling abusive priests from parish to parish and over-relying on counseling of priests to solve the problem, Reuters reported.

Victims groups have called on the pope to fire Pell, the highest-ranking Vatican official to be accused of sexual abuse, or for him to resign.

Francis said Pell deserved the benefit of the doubt, adding that "once justice has its say, I will speak."